MATTHEWGOODONLINE

After mentioning Luis Posada and the US’s double standard regarding terrorists that it has sponsored in the past, I came across a piece on Salon.com this morning entitled The coddled “terrorists” of South Florida about Alpha 66 which was a very interesting read. It included some rather telling passages as well…

“That’s sheer bullshit,” counters Wayne Smith, who was chief of mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1982, making him the de facto U.S. ambassador to Havana. Smith, who now runs the Cuba Program at the D.C.-based Center for International Policy, invokes the names of two of the most notorious Cuban exiles to argue that the U.S. does, in fact, play favorites. “We are certainly not applying these laws objectively in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and a whole lot of others who have been involved in terrorist activities. We say that countries must take action against terrorists, but we’re clearly not. And I think it’s because we’re sympathetic to their actions.”

In the case of Posada there are contradictions that are important to observe. The first is that he was trained by the United States. The second is that he was a CIA asset and worked on various agency-sponsored initiatives in Latin America, including operations in Nicaragua under Ollie North. These facts, given his activities, raise questions as to what the CIA knew of them, or was informed of by way of various organizations with known connections to the CIA, such as the Cuban American National Foundation.

That said; it should come as no surprise that since his illegal arrival in the United States, and following a brief incarceration and various legal proceedings, he is currently a free man.

One government’s revolutionary is another’s terrorist, and visa versa, making the hypocrisy of those that claim to be combating terrorism abroad all the more profound.